Perhaps one of the most useful upgrades from Photoshop 6.5 to 7 (for those of you who actually remember the good ol' days of PS 6) was the Patch tool. At least from a retouching standpoint. No longer would retouched faces look like something out of a Stephen King novel. What the patch tool improved on was the ability to blend the textures and shading of a selected area of an image whereas the clone stamp could only clone pixels from a defined source. The Patch Tool also gave us the ability to repair , or "patch" large sections of an image at one time. A MAJOR time saver to be sure.

Thankfully my favorite retouching tool is still around today in Adobe's latest incarnation of Photoshop, CS3. While slightly more daunting than it's cousins; the spot healing brush and healing brush respectively, the Patch Tool remains one of the quickest and in my case, most used of the retouching tools. The first time many of you selected the Patch Tool and drew your first selection, you were probably scratching your heads thinking, "What is this thing doing?". And depending on whether you had "Source" or "Destination" selected in the top tool options bar, strange things may have indeed been going on.

Before using the Patch Tool it is important to know the difference between the two main methods of patching, "Source" and "Destination". With "Source" selected, draw a selection around the portion of the image that you want patched (a pimple for example) and drag the selection to a portion of the face that is more ideal. As you're dragging the selection you may notice how inside the "bad area" selection, you get a sort of preview. When "Destination" is selected, draw a selection around a good area and drag that over the bad area. For example; to get rid of a pimple you would draw a selection around a smooth part of skin and drag that on top of the pimple.

Getting rid of small details like acne is fine and dandy, but it's the larger areas that the Patch Tool really shines. Laugh lines and wrinkles? Circles and bags under the eyes? Fly away hairs? No problem. You can get rid of the whole thing in one fell swoop. There are times when patching an area will have an undesirable effect on the perimeter of the patched area. In these cases it is best to use the Patch Tool in conjunction with the Healing Brush and/or Clone Stamp. Use either brush to clean up the perimeter of the patched area. Other "patch" jobs might yield a poorly blended area. In this instance it's best to undo and try again. It's also a good idea to work on a copy of the layer containing the subject to be patched. You can also make a snapshot of the image in the History palette to revert back to in case Stephen King rears his twisted head and the image you set out to fix turns into a scary mess.